Guide
Your first city
The first hour of a Blockline city decides how easy the next ten will be. Here is how to found a town that grows instead of stalling.
Founding the city
A new game opens with a short founding sequence. First you name the city; the name appears on signs and in the letters residents send you, so pick something you will be happy to read for a while. Next you choose the land. The game surveys three stretches of country for you, each drawn from one of its map types, and you can reroll for more or type in a friend's seed code to play the same terrain they did.
The map types are:
- Island. One landmass ringed by sea, with rivers running to the coast.
- Coastal mainland. Open country meeting the sea along one or two shores.
- Peninsula. A tongue of land reaching out from the mainland, bays on either side.
- River valley. A broad river and its tributaries cross the land to a short coast.
- Archipelago. Large islands split by narrow straits: bridges tie the city together.
- Lake country. Inland lakes and streams, with one sheltered sea bay for a harbour.
Water shapes everything later on. A coast gives you a site for a dock, rivers can carry a hydro dam, and every stretch of water you want to cross costs a bridge. If you want an easy first city, pick land with a broad, dry middle and a short coast.
Finally you site the town hall. It opens as the modest Founder's Office and rebuilds itself grander as the population passes each milestone, up to the Grand City Hall at 25,000 residents. It can never be demolished, so put it somewhere with room to grow around it. Once it stands, Blocky, the city's helper, offers a tour of the interface; it is worth taking once.
Lay your first streets
Streets are the skeleton of the city. Every zoned lot needs a street within reach, and every street must link back to the town hall's network: a neat grid that isn't joined to the hall is just paving. A plain road costs $12 a tile and carries every utility's mains underneath it, which matters more than it first appears (see the utility networks guide).
Start with one spine running out from the hall and a few short side streets. Leave gaps between blocks wide enough for a lot or two on each side; you will want space later for parks, schools and the services that keep land valuable.
Zone land and let people build
You don't build houses in Blockline: you zone land and residents and businesses build on it. There are four zones: homes, shops, mixed use and industry. They depend on each other. Homes need jobs, shops need customers, and industry makes the construction materials that almost every later build consumes, so a town with no industry eventually runs out of the stuff it is built from.
The first charter, A place to call home, is a good shopping list for the opening: 8 road tiles, 6 residential lots, 2 commercial lots, 4 industrial lots and 40 residents. Put the industry a street or two away from the homes. Workshops open as soon as they have power and a street, and they are smoky neighbours.
Tip. Zone in small batches. A lot that can't grow simply sits empty, and it's easier to see what's missing on six lots than on sixty. Why isn't my city growing? lists every check a lot must pass.
Bring power and water
Nothing grows in the dark. The gas plant puts 1,250 units of power on its grid, and a water tower supplies 1,100 units of water to its network. Set them beside a connected street and the streets do the rest: every building along a connected street, or touching a connected building, is served. Where a plant stands away from the streets, a power line or a water pipe joins it up.
These early utilities, together with the solar array, the wind turbine and the farmstead, go up the moment you place them. Bigger civic buildings are built by crews over several days, which is covered in construction and maintenance.
Zoned lots stop growing while power or water coverage is below 80%, so add capacity a little before you need it. The second charter, Keep the lights on, asks you to hold both above that line for days at a time.
Start the clock
A new city starts paused, so you can lay out the first neighbourhood without the clock running. Press Space to bring it to life and again to pause. An in-game day lasts 20 real seconds (4 steps of 6 hours each), so a city grows over hours of play rather than minutes. Lots check whether they can grow at intervals, so give changes a few days to show before deciding they haven't worked.
If you walk away and leave the city running, it pauses itself after a long spell without any input, so a forgotten tab can't run your treasury into the ground.
The Mayor's Computer
Almost all management happens on the Mayor's Computer, a desktop of apps that opens over the map. Press C to open it, 0 to jump straight to City Stats, or ? for the full list of keyboard shortcuts. By default the city pauses while the computer is open, so you can read and plan without falling behind.
The apps you will use most early on:
- Problems lists what is holding the city back, most urgent first. When you don't know what to do next, start here.
- Charter shows the current chapter's goals, its grant and what it unlocks (see charters and research).
- Finance holds taxes, department funding, loans and infrastructure renewal (see the money guide).
- Help holds the in-game guides, which read your own city and tell you what is happening right now.
A sensible first hour
- Name the city, choose the land and site the town hall with room around it.
- Run a street out from the hall and zone a small block of homes on both sides.
- Place a gas plant and a water tower beside the street.
- Zone two or three shops among the homes and a few industrial lots a block away.
- Press Space, watch the first lots fill, and check Problems every few days.
- When the first charter completes, spend its grant on what Problems is complaining about, not on the shiniest new building.
From there, desirability, money and transport are the guides to read next.